


Thicker than Water

by nirejseki



Series: Slices of Life [4]
Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Backstory, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Families of Choice, Gen, Lewis Snart's A+ Parenting, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-20
Updated: 2016-03-20
Packaged: 2018-05-27 22:08:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6302167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nirejseki/pseuds/nirejseki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Family is what you make of it.</p>
<p>(Coldwave Week 2016: Parents)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thicker than Water

After he graduated from his last stint in juvie – the long one, the one that took him past juvie age and into “if we see you in this court again, Mr. Rory, we will have no choice but to sentence you to prison as a full adult” – Mick drifted for a few years. Adult meant no more school and no more foster care, though he made a point of stopping by Etta’s place to try to drop off some cash because she’d been great as far as fosters go. She already had a whole set of new kids hanging around the place trying to look tough, but she still found time to kick his ass for trying to give her money and shove a metric ton of food down his throat, possibly because she thought he was still thirteen. (After, he’d found the new kids and told them very seriously that the only defense against Etta’s food was self-defense and where to find the cookbooks, because damn if Loretta Jo Baker wasn’t the worst cook he’d ever met. And he was pretty sure juvie food was supposed to be a _punishment_. The kids had looked deeply relieved.)

He picked up a few jobs here and there, found that he liked working crews better than working solo but never really finding one that he could stick with. Either they thought he was dumb and tried to cheat him out of his fair share – like he couldn’t see it coming a mile away – and he’d have to ditch them or he’d light one too many fires and they’d ditch him. Plus, most of the people he worked with were dumber than he was; he didn’t actually want to go to prison (or, after a particularly stupid screw up, _back to_ prison, even though they’d only tossed him in for a few months because his excuse of “no, sir, I was too busy lighting a fire in the yard to participate in that robbery” worked surprisingly well with his arson record and they couldn’t stick him with much more than a misdemeanor). 

One day – about a year after the prison thing and a few days after quitting yet another crew because he could deal with incompetence but he couldn’t sign up to a plan that all but walked into the police station and shouted “I’m committing a crime please arrest me now!” – he pulled down a map and got to thinking about where he’d go next. 

Mick needed a crew and he’d basically gone through all the ones this city had to offer (just like he had the last two cities – not wanting to sign up for Mafia work left some serious slim pickings in Calvin City, seriously, _never again_ ), and by now he’d exhausted all the cities he’d ever lived in during the extended family hot-potato someone-please-take-the-arson-kid dance of his childhood. So where to now?

Maybe instead of following a city he ought to try to think about who he’d want to work with. The perfect crew, the way there’d be a perfect score one day. Someone smart, that’s for sure; someone who could handle themselves. Someone who could handle _Mick_ , maybe even rein him in on the bad days. He’d met maybe five people in his whole life who could do that, and most of them weren’t an option either because they were dead, in jail, or not actually criminals (thanks, Etta).

Though, now that he thought about it, there’d been that kid in juvie for a few months. Len Snart, with the ego that said he was better than everyone else, the mouth that wasn’t afraid to tell it to everybody, and the flinch any time anyone walked too close. After that first dust-up, Len had taken to ordering him around like breathing and a good half the time it actually worked, too. Len’d never gotten pissed when Mick had insulted his plans – hell, he’d actually taken his suggestions most of the time, when Mick could be bothered to make them. He usually saved his bitch fits for when Mick deviated from some plan Len’d worked out in his head. Of course, Mick had to admit that when followed Len’s plans usually _worked_ , which is a hell of a lot better than most of the crews he’d been with thus far.

Also, he distinctly remembered that Len had been tossed into juvie for lifting diamonds, and that sounded a hell of a lot better than the stupid stick-up jobs he’d been doing thus far, where there was nothing to burn and not even a lot of cash left over after the take had been split.

So, sure, that’s a workable plan. Find Len, see if he’s still cracking, see if he has a crew he’ll let Mick join up in. It’s possible Len’s working solo, of course, but Mick can work with that; Len’d never been able to resist someone who’ll listen to him talk – Mick distinctly remembers having to break up a budding friendship with Cuckoo Charlie, who was 100% guaranteed to become a serial killer one day, and who had spent the entirety of those conversations looking like he was trying to figure out what part of Len he wanted to chop off and eat first, and just couldn’t decide. It’s _theoretically_ possible that Len’s gone straight, but Mick’s seriously having trouble even thinking that thought. 

That’s decided, then. He’ll go find Len. It’s not going to be hard to do it, either, because Mick’s advice (given the first time they’d met) about flying under the radar at juvie because Mick won’t always be around to get him out of trouble went out the goddamn window when September 8 rolled around and Len promptly got into about fifteen fistfights in one day to defend the honor of the Central City Cougars. He’d also somehow managed to start a fairly devoted football betting ring that _included_ all the people he’d just finished fighting with, which Mick didn’t really get but was somehow given to understand that his own vague fondness for the New England Patriots, if disclosed, would immediately lead to a mass lynching. 

Central City it is, then. He’d gotten as far as Keystone (see: juvie) and he vaguely remembered his family living in a suburb one time, but he’d never hopped the river to Central. Other than the Cougars, of which he had heard an impossible number of facts about because he may have only known Len for a few months but the kid was a walking talking dictionary of useless facts, he wasn’t all that familiar with it. 

It took him a few weeks of poking around to actually find Len; Central wasn’t anywhere near as big as Gotham but it was still pretty sizable. Still, he’d finally gotten a hint about where’s the right bar to find the guy (everyone kept thinking he meant some guy named Lewis Snart, who he assumed was some relation of Len’s, and telling him he was off in prison) and walking in to see Len sitting in a table in the back and glaring down at what was pretty obviously a blueprint was pretty sweet. Even sweeter had been walking up to the table, with Len just looking up and saying, “Hey, Mick, why don’t you pull up a chair?” like it hadn’t been going on three years since they’d last seen each other. 

The first job they did together was pretty epic, too; Len had apparently been looking for muscle to beat back one of the twistier parts of his plan and a recent mob war had recruited all the good ones – Len shared Mick’s feelings about the Families, which is that they were nothing but trouble and good for nothing but pawning off crap to – and Mick walking in there at that moment worked out just right for both of them. Even after the illegal goods discount and splitting the take with the three other crew members Len already had, the take was in the five digit range for each of them. Five goddamn digits each among a team of five, and the guy who planned the job barely over his eighteenth birthday; the future was looking bright.

Well, all of them got five digit payouts except for Len who apparently decided to just give one of the bracelets they’d picked up to his baby sister. Because twelve year olds had a great need for diamond bracelets, apparently, in the great cut-throat arms race of middle school interpersonal politics, or so Len had explained to him in a bit of an offside. 

After everything had been split up, the others had grabbed their takes and headed out, talking about going to get blitzed. Mick shook his head when he heard that – they were already in a bar? Did they think the bartender was just there as an accessory? – and settled back down next to Len with his beer, which got him a weird expression.

“What?” 

Len just blinked, long and slow. “You thinking of sticking around?”

“Sure, as long as you’ll have me.”

And that, as they say it, was that. 

Mick figured out a few months in that permanent crews were actually pretty rare outside the Families in Central, with people meeting up for a job then breaking apart once it was done, only to meet up again a few months later, but Len never mentioned it again, negotiating the share of the take for both of them when they joined up with crews and automatically including Mick in his calculations when Len was planning his own. The first time one of the crews they’d joined had suggested giving Mick a smaller part of the take, Len had punched the guy out before Mick had even figured out what the guy had been saying.

“You do remember that I’m the brawn to your brains here, right?” Mick had asked Len afterwards, feeling a deep sense of satisfaction in the universe as the other crew members dragged the boss away to patch him up. 

Len snorted, still busy glaring in the other guy’s direction. “Doesn’t matter. Like I’m going to let anyone get away with gypping my partner.”

Partner. Huh. 

Mick could get used to ‘partner.’ 

\-------------------

It was nice, having a partner. 

Mick went on every job that Len planned, even if he didn’t join up with all the jobs Len took. Len worked a frankly ridiculous number of heists, actually. Big, small, good plan, stupid plan, sometimes even double-booking jobs on the same night or working through an injury accrued in a prior job. The jobs Len really preferred were meticulously thought out, all angles worked out months in advance and contingencies galore, but you mentioned a payout to him and he was in. 

Seven months of that later, Mick finally got around to asking him why he never seemed to have any money. 

“Seriously, what are you spending it on? You live in –” Mick gestured at the shitty one bedroom that they’d somehow ended up sharing by virtue of Mick not having bothered to find a place to crash in Central and having lit the last motel he’d stayed at on fire, and via Len’s total inability to give a damn or even really notice, which really said it all in Mick’s opinion. “– and you actually _like_ the shitty seats at football games –”

“Now, you can’t tell me you don’t like the throwing-things-at-other-people seats, Mick–”

“ _And_ ,” Mick continued, ignoring Len’s admittedly fairly valid point. “I know you’re paying for your sis’s skating lessons, but seriously, how much can that cost?”

Len told him.

Mick stared at him. “For _ice skating_?” 

Len shrugged.

Mick took a minute to absorb that – seriously, if coaches got paid that much just to teach little girls to hop around on ice skates every criminal he knows may in fact be in the wrong business – before shaking his head and getting back to the point, which is that “That’s _still_ not enough to account for all the money, Len. You know the chance of you getting nabbed by the cops goes up when you go out on a stupid job, right?”

Len rolls his eyes. “Of course I know that, which is why I _prefer_ to plan my own.”

“Uh-huh. And one day you may be known for that, instead of for being the town bike of crime.”

Len looked hilariously offended by that.

“So, seriously, what’s it for? That weird comic book club you have?”

“It’s not a–” Len stopped himself, for once, because Mick was right and it was totally a stupid comic book club. 

“I mean, I know for a fact that you’re not actually paying for any of those science classes you sit in down at the triple-C–”

“ _Engineering_ classes.”

“–so it’s not that, either. You have too many hobbies, you know that?”

Len was pouting. He’d deny it, but it was totally true. He needed not to do that, it made him look like he was ten. “And you’ve only got one, Mick, we all know that.”

Mick crossed his arms and gave Len a look. 

Len looked back for a moment, clearly trying to gauge his chance at exiting this conversation without answering and with dignity (answer: about zero). Figuring that out, because Len was always the smart one, he sighed and lolled back on the couch. 

“Mick, _in addition to those things_ , you know I’m paying off a mortgage, right?”

He hadn’t known that. That actually made some sense. But only some. “Lisa’s house?”

Len nodded. 

“You _hate_ that place.”

“But Lisa’s gotta have somewhere to live.” Len crossed his own arms now, like he’d just finished the conversation. He looked dumb, all sprawled out on the couch like that. 

“With half the shit you spend on that mortgage, we could move her downtown with us.” Mick suggested, then took a moment to wonder what the hell he was saying. He did not want to live with a twelve year old girl. He was not _qualified_ to live with a twelve year old girl.

Len smirked at him like he could read his thoughts. “The school district’s better there than it is here, Mick.”

Mick sighed. It still seemed like a dumb thing to spend money on, but what did he know. He still mailed Etta some cash every couple of months, after all, even if the only pay off he got from that was an expletive-covered postcard signed by the newest kids in the house. “How much of the mortgage you covering, then?”

Len promptly looked shifty-eyed and every bit the skinny little punk Mick had first met. “Uh. All of it?”

“Len, _you hate that house_.”

“Lisa’s gotta live somewhere and I can’t take care of her all the time ‘cause I’m _working_.”

“You’re only working so much to pay off a mortgage on a place you don’t like. Besides, don’t your mom pay some?”

Len shrugged. “Mom ran off a few years back, actually. Trish just sort of hangs around, makes sure Lise gets to school on time if I’m not around to take her, keeps child services from poking around too much, that sort of thing.”

“You pay her for that on top of paying for the house?”

“She married my dad,” Len replied dryly. “That means she gets to live in a free house.” 

Mick may have grown up in foster care, but he was pretty sure that wasn’t how it worked. Mostly sure. About halfway sure. Though it would explain a few of the foster homes he stayed in…

“Mick. Don’t worry about it. In a few years, Lisa’s gonna graduate and go do ice skating or something, and then you and me are gonna to go down there and you can torch the place for me, mortgage or not. And Trish can go fuck herself.”

That sounded hell of a lot better. Also kinda nice that Len thought they’d still be sticking together five years down the line.

And Mick couldn’t really say anything about the whole Lisa thing, it was practically Len’s reason for existing. Mick had gotten to meet Lisa by that point; it was fairly inevitable what with him being Len’s partner and all, but it turned out that for a twelve year old girl she was surprisingly tolerable. He’s pretty sure Len told her about him in advance and planned out their meeting with the same sort of care he used on their bigger jobs, because they met for the first time on the Fourth of July when Mick was well-supplied with fireworks and beer and inclined to think well of anyone who crossed his path. Lisa had snuck some fizzy exploding thing out of her school science lab for them to add to one of the fireworks, too, which Mick was fully in favor of, and she mostly wanted to talk about which action movies had the best car chase scenes. Which in turn led to a long mutual bitching session about Len’s amazing inability to drive anything faster than an old grandmother or, as Len called it, the “speed limit”. Len had theatrically sulked through the entire conversation before bringing them both tubs of ice cream and threatening to steal Mick a proper barbeque so they could force him to cook next year, which Mick thought was awesome and said a lot about Len’s inability to threaten anyone properly. Which was okay, because that’s why he kept Mick around. 

It was a good thing that Lisa was pretty cool, really, because she practically did live with them at the end of the day – Len drove her to school every morning he wasn’t actively on a job, then took her from school to her ice skating lessons and sometimes stuck around to watch them, and then every weekend she’d come over to watch movies. She thought her big brother was the best person on the face of the earth (Mick generally agreed) but that he needed to be brought down half a dozen pegs and possibly forced at gunpoint to eat and sleep on a regular basis (Mick _definitely_ agreed). 

Mick suspected she hated that house as much as Len did and felt her out on the subject one day when Len was out of the house. She responded very favorably to the idea of him torching the place once she graduated, though she felt strongly that “tomorrow” might work better as a time frame if Len wasn’t sure to be a massive killjoy about it. 

It was all going so well that it was honestly a surprise when everything abruptly went to hell.

Or, more to the point, when Lewis Snart showed up.

\---------------------

Mick’s first clue that something was wrong was that Len came home at three, slamming the door behind him and waking Mick out of a perfectly pleasant nap on the couch. At first, Mick figured that he’d just overslept, but both his clock and his watch agreed that it was three ten, and Len ought to be driving Lisa to her ice skating lesson right now. Then he checked to make sure that he hadn’t forgotten the date and it was actually a weekend, but the calendar prominently posted on their fridge for that very purpose was clearly marked as being a Thursday.

Mick contemplated this for a minute, before giving up on trying to figure out the weirdness that was the Snart siblings and yelling, “Hey, Len! You maybe forgetting something?”

Hey, if there was one thing watching all those cartoons with Len and Lisa taught him, it was to never dismiss amnesia or time travel as a potential explanation for weird behavior.

Len appeared at the door to the bedroom, pulling on a thick leather jacket Mick hadn’t seen before. “I’m going out. Got a job.”

Mick raised an eyebrow. “You remember to drop Lisa off today?” 

“She’s not going to practice today.” Len said shortly, crouching down and yanking out the box they stored where the dishwasher was supposed to be. Not the perfectly respectable and regularly used box of lockpicks and spare wallets they kept on the top level, but the bigger, dust-covered box right below it. 

The gun box.

Right, then. “So, where we going?” 

“ _We_ ain’t going nowhere. _I_ got a job.” Len pulled out a piece and checked it over before shoving it into his belt and rummaging around for ammo. His shoulders are pulled up, tight with tension. “I’ll be back tomorrow, probably.”

“You do remember that the sentence for getting caught doing felony murder in Central is a hell of a lot longer than it is for theft, right?”

“I ain’t planning on killing nobody,” Len said, but he wasn’t meeting Mick’s eyes. “Job said to bring one.”

Mick didn’t reply, but grabbed another gun out of the box and checked it himself. Fuck if Len was going anywhere without him in this kind of mood. It wasn’t like Mick had a personal problem with taking guns along on jobs or even with using them, but Len was eighteen. It was a good age to make stupid decisions. Mick hadn’t even _heard_ about this job before now. Hell, he hadn’t even heard anything at the bar about any new jobs being planned.

“Mick, you don’t gotta come to this one,” Len said again. He was lingering by the door. 

“I’m coming.” 

“Mick…”

“What? You don’t want me to come, tell me to my face.”

Len pressed his lips together tightly and swallowed. “I don’t want you to come.”

Ouch. 

“Good to know,” Mick said as evenly as he could manage. “I also don’t care. I’m still coming.”

Len looked strangely relieved for a second, which made no sense if he was trying to ditch Mick, but then his face went strangely impassive. “Whatever. Do what you like.”

Mick trailed behind Len as they skipped their regular bar and head down to… _hell_ no.

“Len, that’s Darbinyan territory. We don’t do jobs for the Families.”

“I already told you that _we_ ain’t doing anything, Mick.” Len said steadily. “You don’t like it, don’t come, but either way stop whining about it.”

Well, he already came this far; he might as well keep going. Even if Len had apparently been replaced by an alien from Mars. 

Some heavy-set guy was already ragging on about some stupid plan when they slipped through the door. They hung by the back, but the guy still noticed them, stopping his speech long enough to say “You’re late” in a tone that implied that it was a sin on par with murdering puppies and orphans. 

Mick expected Len to roll his eyes or say something cutting in return the way he usually did, but Len just stared at the ground. 

The plan, as Mick listened to it get laid out, was frankly awful. It was clearly as much about revenge on someone or another than it was about the score. 

Len visibly twitched a few times, listening to it, but when the big guy started describing the exit strategy (or lack thereof), he finally spoke up. 

“If there isn’t a back door, you could put someone at the west side-”

The guy holds up his hand and Len just goes quiet. “If you can’t even be bothered to show up on time, son, you don’t get any input in the plan. Just listen and learn.” 

At this point, Mick isn’t surprised when Len doesn’t do anything he normally would, like say something cutting back or signal to Mick to use a bit of muscle. Or, you know, leave. Because apparently that’s not on the table tonight.

The plan gets laid out, a couple of the other guys in the room offer some suggestions, but generally it’s in the same shape it was when it started. The big guy starts separating them into groups, clearly based primarily on the size of the various men; when Mick gets put in with a group of Darbinyan bruisers, he starts to speak up in protest when Len catches his eye, shaking his head just a little. He looks vaguely sick. So Mick shuts up, even though this whole thing stinks to high heaven. He’s going to light something on fire tonight to make up for it, he just knows it. His shrink is going to be real disappointed in him. 

The big guy and Len are talking back in the corner – well, the guy’s talking and Len’s just nodding along. And then the guy has his hand on Len’s shoulder (Len _hates_ that) and pulls him out of the room.

One of the thugs nudges Mick’s side. “That your boyfriend you keep looking at over there?”

Mick turns to him; the guy’s bigger than he is and he’s got three friends, which ain’t good odds for a fistfight, so he decides to pull one of Len’s tricks of talking bigger guns than he’s got. “You know, it only takes a temperature of about 140 degrees to light a human body on fire. Skin just turns straight to ash at 162. That ain’t all that high compared to most other things, you know; you can get there just using the contents of an average kitchen.” 

Well, Mick’s kitchen, anyway.

The thug takes a few steps backwards, looking supremely weirded out. “Right, whatever,” he says, trying to laugh it off. “That important or something?”

“Sure it’s important,” Mick says. “I’m lighting something on fire tonight.” Takes a step forward. “Haven’t decided what it’s going to be yet.”

“Hey, man, I didn’t mean nothing by it! You, uh, you do work with Snart before?”

Mick rolls his eyes. “Couple of times, yeah.”

“He any good? I know he’s done some Family work before, but I’ve heard it always gets bloody when he’s involved. That’s why they call him.” The thug’s clearly relieved to have distracted Mick, he’s just making small talk, but none of that talk makes any sense. Len doesn’t do Family work, and he sure as hell doesn’t have enough of a rep to get _called in_ for something. Yet, anyway. And as far as Mick knows, he hasn’t ever killed anybody. 

“I heard he’s a mean sonofabitch, but pretty efficient,” one of the other thugs offers. “Like, you might have to kill the whole office and shoot your way out, but he’s a great mechanic. Don’t matter what type of safe the Santinis use, he’ll get able to get it open.” 

Mick crosses his arms, shifting uncomfortably. This is why he doesn’t do Family gigs; the mob’s first priority is always about killing their rivals. 

The last guy in the group clears his throat. “Yeah, well, I heard he’s bringing his kid in on this one,” he says. “That must mean he thinks it’ll go well, right?”

“Don’t be a moron. Snart’s been bringing his kid with him on jobs since the kid was ten or something; it doesn’t mean anything – never heard anything particularly good about the kid, either; I heard his old man says he’s more trouble than he’s worth in the end, but don’t let him hear you repeat that…”

_Shit_. 

Len doesn’t talk about his dad much, just says he’s off in jail somewhere or talks about heists his dad brought him along on, but Mick’s seen the scar on Lisa’s shoulder, long and nasty and a few years old. She’s _twelve_ , but she played it off with a shrug, just said she messed something up and her dad taught her a lesson. Mick’s been in foster homes that taught those sort of lessons, but he got big real early on and they never tried it on him. 

Len’s been out of sight for over ten minutes now, walked right out the door following a guy who felt free to put his hands all over him and called him ‘son’. 

Mick’s a fucking _idiot_. 

“Be right back,” he says to the thugs and heads over that way double time. 

When he walks in, everything looks fine; Len’s staring at the ground, shoulders tight and tense like they were before. The guy – Lucas or Louie Snart, whatever the fuck his name is – turns around, scowling. “You’re interrupting a private moment.” 

Mick ignores the hint, just shrugs and plays the big dumb guy. “Someone said he needed to talk to you. Said it was important.” 

The old guy buys it, snorting in disgust. He sounds like a pig. “Of course they do.” He reaches out, squeezes Len’s shoulder. At this distance, Mick can see the guy’s knuckles go white with pressure, digging the fingers in there, but Len doesn’t flinch, just keeps right on looking at the ground. “We’ll talk later, son.”

Mick waits till the guy walks out the door before turning back to Len, who’s tugging at the collar of his jacket. “You okay?”

Len looks up, clearly surprised. There’s the start of a hell of a shiner on his left eye and his attempts to pull the jacket collar up don’t fully hide the bruises starting to show on his throat. “Y-yeah,” he replies roughly, then clears his throat, shaking his head and putting back on the impassive face he’s been sporting all night. “I’m fine.”

“We sure got different definition of fine, kid. What the hell–”

“Mick. It’s fine, really. He just got pissed about me being late.”

Mick abruptly remembers that Len was hurrying back in the house, but he waited for Mick to catch up, for their little argument. Probably would have made it on time if Mick hadn’t stuck his nose in. 

He scowls, trying to figure out how to apologize, but Len’s already shaking his head. “Mick, he’s been out of town for a year or two. If it wasn’t going to be that, it was going to be something else. He’ll ease off after this. It’s just to make sure I hadn’t gone soft while he was gone, that’s all.”

“Your dad is fucked up, Len. You sure you want to go through with this?”

Len makes a face. “If this goes through, the Darbinyans will pull him out of the city for a bit till it cools off here, make sure he doesn’t get whacked by one of the other Families.” He hesitates. “Could you not tell Lisa about this?”

“You didn’t drive her to skate practice,” Mick points out. “I think she’ll figure it out.”

Len shakes his head. “No, she knows he’s back. Turns out he’s been staying back at the house; that’s where I bumped into him. S’why she isn’t going to practice. He thinks it’s a waste of time.” 

Mick puts his hand into his pocket, grabs his lighter and thinks of fire. “Len…”

“Anyway, that’s not what I meant,” Len continued, rubbing at the bruises on his neck in a sort of jerky nervous twitch. They’re pretty obviously fingerprints. “Can you not tell Lisa about this job? She doesn’t much like it when I do jobs with him. I told her I’d stopped, so she can’t find out about this.”

“Len.”

Len stilled, hearing something in Mick’s tone. “Yeah, Mick?”

Mick tried to think of a good way to say it, but there really wasn’t one. “If you want, I can take care of him for you.” 

Len’s already shaking his head, but Mick holds up his hands. “Lenny. Just…think about it. You know I’ve got a couple of names on my list already; I don’t mind doing it. If he’s dead, he won’t hurt you or Lisa anymore.”

“We’re surrounded by his friends, Mick.”

“Then I won’t do it now; I can get him later.”

“ _No_ , Mick. If we finish this job, he’ll have to go out of town for a while. If we’re lucky, it’ll all go to hell and he’ll just go back to prison, buy us a few more years.” 

“You ain’t considering all the options here, Lenny.” 

Len grimaced. “He’s still my dad, Mick.” 

Mick nodded, accepting it. He didn’t like it, but Len seemed to feel pretty strongly about it. So he’d wait, instead. If he ever saw the fucker put hands on Len or Lisa in person, he’d do it anyway and blame it on his temper. Len’d forgive him once he’d gotten over himself and realized it was all for the best. Mick was about 70% sure he could get Lisa to back him.

Len glanced at the door. “I need to go, Mick. Job’s starting.”

“I’m coming with you.”

That flash of surprise again. “You don’t have to.”

Mick shrugged. “We’re partners, aren’t we?”

Len smiled a thin little smile that looked a little painful. “Yeah, we are. But being partners doesn’t mean you have to follow me when I’m making a mistake.”

“Don’t worry, kid. Next time you pull something like this, I’m going to hit you over the head and lock you in the bathroom instead. S’why I got the lock for the door fixed.”

Len frowned. “Mick, that isn’t funny.”

“Wasn’t kidding.”

“ _Mick_.”

“Just tell me I get to light something on fire tonight.”

Len rolled his eyes, the familiar refrain calming him down the way the thought of actually lighting something is doing for Mick. “Relax. I’ll figure something out.”

About three hours later, Mick’s feeling pretty great, Len is laughing his ass off, and Mr. Lewis Snart is off on the road to Gotham, courtesy of the Darbinyan Family. Mick talked to one of the thugs about it; apparently whatever the Family really wanted, they got, so the older Snart gets to go run their intake/outtake business while things cool down. According to the thug, cooling down takes at least six, eight months, unless someone reminds the other Families about the incident. Mick figures he can pass along a rumor in six months, maybe push it out to a year or two. If this sort of things signifies the caliber of Snart the older’s planning capabilities, two years on the outside will see him pull a job that gets him caught and put back inside again, and then Mick won’t be forced to kill him. 

Len’s still laughing. Apparently, lighting a cop car on fire really does it for him in terms of humor. That, or he’s hysterical. Mick’ll give him another minute or two.

Len gets himself under control after a little, shaking his head. His shiner’s starting to darken already. “I need to go check in on Lisa,” he says. “Make sure he didn’t do anything earlier on. The cop car do it for you for the evening, or do you want something else? Miz Fields, next door, she has another pile of that composting shit she wants torched.”

Mick nods. “Yeah, I’ll get to it tonight.” He needs it, after the night he’s had. “You go get Lisa.”

“Just remember to use the goddamn fire pit this time, will you? I’ll be back in an hour to watch.”

Because Mick’s an idiot to the end, he lets Len go off on his own. 

In the end, it turns out Lewis Snart decided to swing by the house on his way out of town, too. Len slinks back a good few hours later than promised with two matching black eyes and a sprained wrist, shadowed by Lisa, who was sporting a couple of nasty bruises of her own but nothing serious. And for some reason, they still won’t let him go after the fucker. 

They end the night curled up on the bed watching some stupid action flick, one sibling on each side and practically in his lap to keep him sitting down. 

It’s not a good night. 

\--------------------

“Mick, you sure about this?” 

Mick reaches out and tries to slap Len upside the head, moving slow enough that Len could duck away easily. “I’m as sure as I was the last four times you asked. What are you, five?”

“Oooh,” Lisa says, leaning forward from the back seat. “I call dibs on asking ‘are we there yet?’!”

Len twists to glare at her. “Lisa. _Seatbelt_.”

“I got one! See?” She pulls at it. “It’s just super loose is all.”

“Then switch to the other side and put on one that fits.”

She sticks out her tongue at him. “What if the other one doesn’t work either?”

“Then we stop the car and steal another one that has _working seatbelts_.”

“We ain’t stopping the goddamn car again,” Mick says. He likes Len and Lisa. They are good people. He is not going to kill them. Goddamnit, this is only a three hour drive. They’d better be almost there. “If we stop the car again, Len’ll get cold feet. _Again_.”

“I don’t got cold feet!”

Lisa bursts out laughing even as she slides over and buckles herself in properly. “Lenny, you’re playing to the wrong audience. I’ve been in bed with you. You got the coldest feet of anyone I’ve ever met!”

“And how many people you been in bed with exactly?!”

He’s not going to kill them. He’s not going to kill them. He’s _not_ going to kill them.

“Hey, Mick, are we there yet?”

Oh thank fucking god that’s the exit turn.

“Yeah, we’re just about there, actually,” Mick says with great satisfaction, revving up the engine. 

Dead silence from both siblings. 

Mick wasn’t surprised: Len may have been the one worrying out loud and at length, but Lisa’s clearly not as eager to actually arrive as she was putting on – which, come to think of it, was probably why Len was putting on such a show. 

Mick smirks. “Relax. Etta’ll be happy to see both of you. You’ll like her.”

He glances over at Len, who’s clutching at the door handle like he thinks he can still escape. Which he can’t, because Mick’ll be damned if he’s taking the car any slower than 60mph and Len himself announced earlier in the trip that throwing yourself out of a car at that speed is almost certainly fatal. 

Len looks like he’s still considering it. 

As they drive closer, Mick points out the first signs of the old junkyard Etta owns. “She used to let me go out back and torch the old cars,” he says conversationally, since both Snart siblings appear to both be frozen in terror at the thought of meeting anyone playing the role of parental figure. “First person who ever dug me a fire pit of my own, told me to use that instead of telling me to just stop. There’ll probably be some other kids there ‘round your age, Lisa. You should kick their asses.” 

He glances at the rearview mirror. Lisa gives him a tremulous smile. “I can do that.” 

Len grimaces and pretends it’s a smile. He was much more against this trip than Lisa was; the second Mick had explained that Etta was the closest thing he had to a parent, Len didn’t want anything to do with it, while Lisa had been tentatively curious. Mick figures it’s because Lisa counts Lenny as an example of a good parental figure, as opposed to Len, who seems deeply convinced that all parents actually just exist to be punishments borne by their children until they can escape and that the rest of the world (and the Hallmark channel) are just spouting propaganda designed to hide this fact. 

Mick had to get Len totally shitfaced before he admitted that he actually thought that, rather than Mick just suspecting that he did, but it was also the kick in the ass that Mick had needed to drag both of them out on this little road-trip to Etta’s place. Which, despite all appearances and overwhemling desire to murder either his passengers or everyone else on the road, was actually not all that far outside of Keystone. 

Mick figured the Snart siblings needed a dose of Etta’s unique brand of overwhelming you with brutal, unrestrained maternal affection. Admittedly, he was still kinda hoping that if he showed them just how awful their dad was, they might let him kill him, but mostly it was because they needed it. 

Not just the affection, either; they just needed to get out of the city, because they were the most city-bound little brats he’d ever met. Lisa had actually asked him if they would see cows on the way. _Cows._ In a suburb outside of Keystone. 

And they’d both looked vaguely disappointed when he told them no. Weirdos.

Getting Lisa in the car had been fairly easy; he’d bribed her with control of the radio. Len ususally refused to let her on the basis that if he got one of those surprisingly catchy boyband tunes stuck in his head in the middle of a job, someone would probably try to off him on the basis of criminal dignity. (No one ever bothered Mick when he hummed them, but that wasn’t really the same thing.) 

Getting Len in the car had required resort to blackmail, plus the threat of just picking him up and carrying him down to the car slung over Mick’s shoulder. 

But he’d managed it and here they were, pulling in to Etta’s driveway and parking the car.  
Mick turned and grinned at his petrified-looking new family. 

“Okay, we’re here. Come on in.”


End file.
